I received a strange phone call last December, one that was hard to comprehend before I completely understood what it was all about.

A colleague at Sporting News was working on a profile of Tyrann Mathieu, LSU’s white-hot star, and called to tell me he didn’t know if he could tell the story.

A troubled kid, he said. A tortured soul.

“I was completely spent after talking to him,” Matt Crossman said that day.

How could he not have been?

Mathieu’s mother had five children, and he was the only one she didn’t raise. His father is serving a life sentence in prison. His maternal uncle and aunt eventually adopted him, but only after his maternal grandfather raised him in New Orleans before dying of a heart attack when Mathieu was 5.

It was then, after his grandfather’s death, that Mathieu said someone first told him they loved him.

So there was Tyrann Mathieu last year, a young man besieged with emotional baggage and only months removed from relative obscurity as a role player in 2010, strolling around New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist with a cult following throughout the sports world. After years of wondering if anyone loved him, he was overwhelmed with adulation and affirmation and a sense of being bigger and better than just about anything anywhere.

Look, I’m not making excuses for Mathieu. Whatever he did at LSU to get dismissed from the team is fairly cut and dry. He was given boundaries, he broke the boundaries. Consequences follow.

But maybe instead of telling the story of another player wasting so much talent, we should take a look at the process that brings us down this road year after year after year.

We build them up, and they eventually fall down. We make them stars, and they eventually are humbled.

Some make it through trials and tribulations; others fade into the oblivion of, “What was that guy’s name again?”

Like it or not, we’re all part of this process. From fans who adore them; to high school teachers and guidance counselors who push them along academically; to coaches who protect them; to “mentors” who build careers off them; to—oh, yes—the media who glorify them.

ESPN televises 18-year-old kids, usually in front of a packed high school gymnasium, deciding where they want to play college football. Think about that for a moment.

A young man who may or may not have had the proper upbringing to handle such attention, is sitting in front of a national television audience after a season in which grown men have called and written letters and begged him to play for them. After recruiting websites have published video of his season highlights, and analysts have talked about his “upside” or “NFL potential.”

After Nike has paid for him to fly across country to be part of “The Opening.” After a street agent tells him that State U. is better than Tech because they take care of you—and because he thinks they’ll give your mother (and the street agent) more cash. After ESPN says it wants to do a documentary on you, and they’re going to call you “The Chosen One.”

And now they’re plopped in front of those same cameras, waiting to make their decision official. The light goes on, the bobblehead on television tells him the world is waiting for his decision and his life will never be the same.

It’s like some bad trip down the rabbit hole.

A few years back, Melvin Alaeze did this, throwing a Penn State hat on the ground before picking up a Maryland hat to proudly proclaim he was a Terp. Now he’s in prison.

Zeke Pike did this last year with his decision to attend Auburn, and the nation’s No. 1 pro style quarterback then tweeted for weeks about his disdain for all things Alabama. Last month, Pike was dismissed from Auburn after violating team rules—and will now play tight end at Louisville.

Year after year after year.

What do we really expect from teenagers given the world before they’ve stepped outside their area code? What do we really expect from teenagers told for years they can do whatever they want, then suddenly realize at college they can only do what they’re told?

“We have a standard that our players are held to,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “When that standard is not met, there are consequences. We will do what we can as coaches, teammates and friends to get (Mathieu) on a path where he can have success.”

Tyrann Mathieu did this himself. He made poor decisions, he will suffer the consequences.

But this can’t be just another story of a star player gone awry; another sad, unspeakable tale that eventually unfolds and shocks those who were part of the process all along.

At some point we have to realize the monster we’ve created and continue to overfeed. Just because more kids survive this mess than don’t; because more kids can handle the pomp and praise, it doesn’t mean we forget about those who can’t—and then go largely unnoticed.